Common forms of interaction between residents of many institutions, such as prisons, nursing homes, mental institutions, etc., include site visits and telephonic communication. For the purposes of simplicity, discussion will be limited to inmates within a correctional facility.
Site visits from, for example, an inmate's family, attorney, etc. to a penal institution, are often not economically or physically possible. The inability of visitors to make site visits to the inmate results from such factors as the distance from and costs incurred to travel to the institution. In addition, it is costly and difficult for some institutions to provide monitoring and security for the visitors to allow controlled inmate communication with external parties.
An alternative to site visits is telephonic communication. However, this poses other problems. Some visitors may be several time zones away from the penal institution making telephonic communication difficult and even prohibitive. Additionally, telephonic communication between external parties and inmates can prove expensive.
Moreover, the need to monitor, control, record and provide detailed records of the usage of a telephone system in a controlled institutional environment is well recognized. It is common to utilize a controlled telephone system capable of monitoring outgoing telephone connections in many types of institutional environments, such as, but not limited to, penal institutions, military institutions, hospitals, schools, businesses, or specific types of government institutions. The reasons for monitoring and controlling institutional telephone systems are evident. To prevent such institutions from incurring unaccountable telephone costs, the institutions must either restrict access to outbound telephone lines or employ a debit system to charge the calling party for the outbound telephone call. Otherwise, unaccountable telephone costs would severally hinder the availability of the telephone systems in institutions.
However, it is often impossible to recover debt accumulated when no payment is received for completed collect calls that originate from a secure institution, such as a penal institution. The greatest portion of debt occurs because the called party cannot or will not pay the invoice. Collection efforts are made by the Local Exchange Carriers (“LECs”) billing the calls, but unpaid balances are eventually written off. In addition, most LECs are slow to report bad debt experience, sometimes as much as eighteen months in arrears. As a result, information provided by the billing process is not helpful to prevent additional losses due to non-payment from the same individual.
Additionally, some small independent local exchange carriers (“ILECs”) do not offer billing services to their customers. As a result, any collect calls placed to these ILECS are un-billable. Similarly, with the advent of local competition, there are a great number of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (“CLECs”) offering local services to both residential and business customers. These carriers do not offer billing services to their customers. The only way to identify these customers after billing is attempted and is returned as un-billable by a Billing Clearinghouse. However, this notification may not be received until two weeks after the collect call placement.
Also, on occasion, certain customers of LECs elect to place their telephone number on collect call block so that no telephone calls may be placed to that customer's telephone number. This is a common service provided by most LECs. Each LEC maintains an independent Line Information Database (“LIDB”) which stores all customer account options, such as collect call block. On occasion, a collect call block is placed on the called party's telephone in between the time the collect call is placed and when the call is submitted for billing. In these cases, the LEC that would have ordinarily billed the call can reject the call record, thereby making the telephone call un-billable.
Furthermore, many penal institutions limit access to calls placed by inmates. One reason for controlling use of the system is to prevent the institution from incurring unaccountable telephone costs. Other reasons for controlling access to the system include preventing harassing calls to outside parties, preventing fraudulent activities, etc. Therefore, systems in such environments often monitor and control the telephone activity of each inmate or resident. For example, systems may restrict calling to only certain telephone numbers. Systems may also have a means of maintaining call records for each inmate or resident, and a means for communicating with called parties to enable the called parties to prevent future telephone calls from inmates or residents. In short, the communications system used in a regulated institution must employ unique monitoring and control functions often unnecessary in other types of telecommunications systems.
Therefore, in order for the methods of monitoring and control to be effective, it is important to prevent inmates or residents from exploiting any loop-holes that can be used to bypass the control features of the system, such as through call forwarding. For example, inmates or residents have been known to use three-way calling as a way to utilize call forwarding by having an outside party connect the inmate or resident to a blocked number. A three-way call is initiated when the remote called party depresses the hook switch on the telephone, generating a hook flash signal. The caller is temporarily put on hold while the called party establishes a connection with a third party. Then, all three parties can converse. Using three-way calling, the inmate or resident may utilize the institution's call system to, among other things, access blocked telephone numbers, for example, to perpetrate additional criminal activities, or harass certain parties. Also, through three-way calling, the calling party has effectively found a way to utilize call-forwarding, albeit, all three parties listening in on the call. Also, the institution may not be able to charge for this service, thereby foregoing any additional revenues that could be generated.
Inmates have also circumvented the controls implemented by institutions by using remote call forwarding through the methods of automatic call forwarding. In these methods, calls coming to a call forwarding number are automatically forwarded to any answering location designated by the family member. These methods are implemented by purchasing a LEC number and having the incoming call be diverted to a long-distance number, outside the LEC where the family member resides. Other methods to automatically divert calls include selecting, for example, *72 at a LEC number and having the call forwarded to a remote location. Once more, the institutions are only able to detect the local telephone number and, accordingly, bill at the LEC rate, thereby foregoing additional revenues that could have been collected had they billed at the long-distance rate.
Yet further, end users (such as family members) have utilized number portability to enable these end users to retain their telephone numbers when moving from one physical location to another. These numbers, may be originally set up with the LEC, however, due to number portability, the end users are located in a different geographic location. As such, the institution is only able to detect the local telephone number and, accordingly, bill at the LEC rate, thereby foregoing additional revenues that could have been generated.
In view of the foregoing, a need clearly exists for an improved revenue management system for managing calls placed using an institution's telephone call system utilizing a local database to establish user number and accounts. In particular, a need exists in the art for a revenue management system capable of generating revenue for long-distance calls that are made from the institution and one that is capable of establishing debit accounts for a called party, and one that is capable of verifying if a call placed to the called party is billable by checking the telephone number against a Local Exchange Carrier databases or a Local Number/Mobile Number/VoIP Portability database.